Who was Kylar to kill a legend?

He tried to still the racing of his heart. His throat was tight. The hot emotions that had fueled him throughout the night cooled. He was cold. Empty. Durzo was right, justice had no place in this world. Logan was dead. Elene had been beaten, and the men who had done all the evil Kylar could imagine were winning. They always had. They always would.

He couldn’t hold on much longer. Durzo would hear the sound of his heart, thudding as it was against his chest. He forced himself to breathe slowly.

Patience! Patience.

He drew a slow breath again and paused. There was the slightest tang on the air.

Garlic! Both master and apprentice had had the same thought. Durzo was hanging exactly as Kylar was, mirror-image, inches away, poised watching the smoke for the slightest eddy.

Kylar jerked his head up and lashed out with the little knife. He must have made a sound, because the smear of darkness that had been just one rung above him was moving too.

His knife cut cloth and he blocked an attack with his other hand as they both dropped off the ceiling.

Kylar hit the floor heavily, splashing in the puddle gathered in the tunnel’s bottom and hitting the metal so hard that he felt a sting in his neck. He rolled and jumped to his feet. He heard the ring of a sword clearing its scabbard.

Durzo winked back into visibility. Kylar let himself become visible too. He was too tired to maintain invisibility for another second. He felt like a wrung-out rag. He stared at three feet of steel in Blint’s hand and the four inches in his own.

“So it comes to this,” Durzo said. “I don’t suppose you have any more tricks like that one up in the tower?”

“I don’t even know how that happened,” Kylar said. “I’ve got nothing left.”

“Good thing I didn’t let you go after Roth then, isn’t it?” Durzo said, that infuriating little smirk on his lips.

Kylar didn’t have it in him to get angry. He was a shell. “I don’t see how it matters,” he said. “But I’d rather my blood was on his head than yours.”

He sheathed the dagger.

“You used the asp venom, didn’t you?” Durzo said. He laughed. “Of course you did.” Durzo saluted Kylar and sheathed his sword.

Then he sagged and had to grab onto a rung on the wall to keep from falling. “I always wondered how it really felt,” Durzo said. He reached up to the gash in his tunic. Kylar had thought he’d only cut cloth, but Durzo’s chest bled from a shallow cut.

“Master!” Kylar rushed to him and kept him from falling as he swooned again.